Journal of Visual Culture, in collaboration with the International Association for Visual Culture, Operational and Curatorial Research, the Museum of Contemporary Cuts and Kasa Gallery, is pleased to announce a new refereed issue titled Visions of Contemporary Cuts.

The issue is guest edited by Lanfranco Aceti, Sabanci University, Istanbul; and Goldsmiths College, University of London.

Visions of Contemporary Cuts is a special call for a refereed issue open to international scholars, curators, artists and thinkers who are provocatively discussing and analyzing the contemporary economic crisis as well as the meaning of the word ‘cuts’ and how these affect contemporary society.

Visions of Contemporary Cuts – Theme

What are the contemporary narratives of the Great Recession (2008-Present) that are defining the politics of economic cuts to the arts, education and social services?

Historically, the narratives and stories of the Great Depression were mainly narrated through institutional forms of representation and visual imagery that presented a portrait of the dispossessed – Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans and Lewis Hine, to note a few of the most well known photographers. Their work of documentation was paid for by the American government, perhaps raising concerns related to an institutionalized form of narrative instrumental to the political realities of the time.

The most poignant portrait of the time, Migrant Mother by Lange, is surrounded by a certain controversy: “Florence Owen Thompson revealed her identity in a letter to a local newspaper, the Modesto Bee, stating her dismay about the iconic photograph. She felt exploited by it, never received a penny, and seemed hurt that the photographer never asked her name.” [Michael Stone, ‘The Other Migrant Mother,’ The Open Photography Forum, http://www.openphotographyforums.com/index.php (accessed February 2, 2013).]

What then are the images of today that represent the contemporary economic crisis and symbolize the financial cuts that are being enforced across the arts, education and public health systems? What are the realities of these cuts in the context of societies in crisis such as the United States and Western Europe? Are the politics of rigor and cuts – with their institutionalized discourse – hiding other realities? And finally, what is the impact of the images and contextualized discourses that we as academics, practitioners, curators, and cultural commentators are constructing?

This themed issue of Journal of Visual Culture seeks papers that address, although are not limited to, the following themes:

1 Cuts and their visual mythology in contemporary discourses2 Cuts, protest and resistance3 Narratives of cuts4 Lives cut: suicides in the economic crisis5 The visual politics of cutting6 Cuts and social justice7 Dreams cut: the failing of upward social mobility8 Creative finance and art cuts9 Comparative analyses between historical images of poverty and contemporary poverty10 The role of media technology in distributing imageries and in creating narrative of cuts11 How to curate the visuality of cuts and its social impact12 Artistic practices in a time of crisis13 Other related topics

Lanfranco Aceti works as an academic, artist and curator. He is Visiting Professor at Goldsmiths College, Department of Media and Communications, and at the Steinhardt School, at NYU; teaches Contemporary Art and Digital Cultures at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Sabanci University, Istanbul; is Editor in Chief of the Leonardo Electronic Almanac (the MIT Press, Leonardo journal and ISAST). He is the Founder of Director of the Museum of Contemporary Cuts (MoCC) and of Operational and Curatorial Research in Art, Design, Science and Technology (OCR). He was Artistic Director and Conference Chair for ISEA2011 Istanbul and the Director of Kasa Gallery, Istanbul.
He has a Ph.D. from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, University of the Arts London and has published, lectured and exhibited internationally.
http://www.lanfrancoaceti.com
http://www.museumofcontemporarycuts.org
http://www.ocradst.org